The Colored Pencil Exercise That Changed My Life

I go through the colored pencil exercise that finally helped color 'click' for me and helped me easily be able to pick and create any color I needed for my colored pencil drawings, no matter what you're drawing or the colored pencil set you are using. Download the free worksheet yourself, fill it in, and keep it handy for all your colored pencil drawings to make creating realistic drawings simpler.

[jadegecko]

in college, I got tired of hauling around a big bag of colored pencils. Even now, I just carry around a true blue (cyan), process red (magenta), and yellow prismacolor, and just blend them, like how an inkjet printer would.. I'll only bring in additional colors if I need special effects (deeper blacks, intense red, sodium vapor light, etc). Hugely improved the quality of my art.

[calliope]

These are nice exercises. I would also recommend trying the same thing using yellow, cyan, and magenta as your primaries. I find that those three colors make more vibrant secondary colors, and makes for color wheels with more even increments.

[reppeplucw]

This is one of the best and most informative video on color theory for colored pencils I've ever seen. Thank you Kirsty for sharing.

[jodydcrawford]

I have to admit, I have never understood why so many people keep banging on about the colour wheel/colour theory so much. It’s always seemed obvious to me what goes with what. But I also understood something significant has been missing from my drawing - the thing that elevates a drawing from flat to real. You have just completely blown my mind - I am so glad I stumbled across this video today! Thank you.

[b.comeau]

Oh my goodness, I have painted with acrylic for years but still have problems with my color mixes and how to make my paintings improve. I do believe watching this video has helped me to understand color theory in a way I never could grasp before! Thank you so much, Kirsty! You are an amazing instructor!

[lesleyegbert]

This video is so timely for me. Thanks for posting on how to blend with a 12-color set. The last two days I've been hunting around for videos like that and they are few and far between! Most other channels will say they're using 12 pencils, but then they use 12 obscure pencils from their set of 150. See, I'm on a two-week small-set challenge. So yesterday I gave up on tutorials and just decided to DIY. I've got to say I'm really proud of myself! I coaxed all kinds of muted, realistic colors out of my $3 "kids" set of 12 from Walmart. Give small set art a try, folks! (If anyone is curious, the pencils I found are Staedtler Design Journey. They remind me of Goldfabers/Polychromos. They're fantastic for the price!)

[sunnyquinn]

This is like my entire semester of Color Theory uni class in one video.

[CreativeCreatorCreates]

I’m absolutely blown away! You’ve rejuvenated my colored pencil fascination. This is the easiest to understand color theory/colored pencil tutorial I’ve ever seen. (I’ve been around for a hot minute.)

Thank you for this, I’m truly grateful!✨🙏✨

[keithaguilar]

A couple of critiques that I hope you don't mind. The tertiary colors. You keep flip flopping them. Yellow Green then Green Yellow. Red Purple (Volet) the Purple Red. Secondly, you touched on it at least twice but you never clarified. The closer you hold a pencil to the tip (Front) the heavier the hand, thus the darker the value. The farther back you hold on the pencil the less pressure you apply (a lighter hand) and the lighter the value. There's also overhand grip vs underhand grip for value control. One last addition is the "Pinch" method for creating gradient values. Pinch (Apply pressure) and you will have a darker value and then as you shade direction you are shading) gradually ease up on pinching and your values will also get gradually lighter. This will help with the shading process and in creating gradients.

[FrostiesDoodles]

Being colour blind i struggle no end with colours nicely named pencils and pens are a big safety net for me.

[creativespark]

Wow, I have been doing these exercises since I started color pencil 13 years ago! These are really helpful! The only suggestion I make is for the color wheel, try to use only five pencils: white, black, magenta, cyan, yellow. The primary colors on this color wheel weren't the best for mixing, especially that warm red. Anyway, thanks for sharing!

[windsspace]

I am a complete beginner and I know you have saved me so much pain and suffering by just sharing these tips and the worksheet. I am thankful to you Kristy

[jasonscott]

I am not an artist… well not a schooled or educated artist. I never went to school. I’ve never been to a class of any kind. But over the last couple years I started painting and drawing. I just felt the need to do so. I love it. I’m not bad but there are times I don’t know how to achieve on canvas or paper what I see in my minds eye. This has been so incredibly helpful. I’ve watched other videos but they were so confusing. This was simplistic and easy to understand. Thank you soooo much. Sincerely. Thank you. Stay well. Stay safe.

[Shreyaobla]

I did have trouble with colour mixing because every tutorial I saw would use many different colours so it was really confusing, but now I get it, playing with colours does give you knowledge and fun 😊 I really missed you Kirsty tbh

[fizishn]

The best tutorial on color creation for art in any video I have seen. These principles can be applied across the board for many medium! Great work!

[catfitz]

Great exercise. I’ve been doing these type of exercises for years. I would recommend trying the same thing with a mid yellow, cyan and magenta, brighter mixes. Also, try doing a split primary colour wheel, that is a warm and cool version of each primary. So much fun learning how colours mix. I do heaps of different colour wheels with different sets of three starting colours..

[musicafteroldage]

I agree with the comments below: this has to be the best Practical colored pencil/color theory video I've watched. I feel smarter after watching it! Thanks for sharing.

[Amazing_Projects]

It's amazing how you can create so many different versions of the same colour!

[SteveRB]

Thank you for a very nice discussion of color mixing. I'm familiar with color mixing in other mediums but haven't yet worked much with colored pencils. The idea of choosing which color to put in a sandwich layer (beyond just layering colors) was something I hadn't considered — it makes a lot of sense when considering how the color shows up through underlying layers and reflects off upper layers. 🙂

[napier]

As someone who uses watercolors, it’s always interesting to see what people have to do with other mediums. I also find that even with watercolors, people still struggle with mixing colors and understanding color theory because of having premade colors in their palette. I learned some basic theory on my own from just using the Daniel smith essentials set of colors! It was a palette of 6 colors, 2 kinds of primaries, cool and warm tone